Being Emily Revised Edition out in May

Editing and rewriting parts of a book that’s already published was a lot harder than I expected. I wanted to keep everything that readers have loved and add new material in a way that didn’t clash with the original.

This new version is over 20,000 words (about 25%) longer than the original. Some of the changes were single words. For example, the first version has the word “transsexual” 59 times. In the revised edition, it’s largely been replaced with transgender and trans; it only appears 5 times. Some changes were additional paragraphs or parts of scenes that I rewrote to update and make them more clear. And I’ve added entirely new scenes, mostly toward the end, to enhance the existing plot.

As you can see from the YA Pride piece, we kept the front cover, adding the awards seals and the news that Stephanie wrote a new intro. (She also helped immensely with the edits and is a lot of fun to work with.) We designed a new back cover and added an image of Emily. I love the idea that after six years of the book being in print, we get to see Emily’s face.

Stay tuned for more blog posts about the making of the new Being Emily, plus related topics. And if you have questions for me, you can ask them here, on Facebook or Twitter.